the end of Israel: dispatches from a Path to catastrophe
By Bradley Burston © 2023 Fryman Press, Berkeley 371 Pages
OVERVIEW: With the kind permission of Haaretz, this is a selection of columns which, taken together, chart a roadmap to an unimaginable war. Going back nearly 20 years, they lead to an Israel where the delusional and the fanatic became sovereign. A land which, the biblical book of Numbers warns us, eats its inhabitants alive.
FROM THE INTRODUCTION: “Over time, you come to realize that any aspect of the Holy Land can be explained either in tens of thousands of words, or in one sentence. The same is true of the tragic and brittle and vicious figure who has overseen the end of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu.
“So this is what this book is about: Once, not long ago, a leader with great resources of potential and power faced a choice – bravely stake your legacy to a vision of an historic and just peace, or contort and sacrifice your country for the sake of your own political longevity.
“He chose. Israel lost. End of story.”
PRAISE FOR THE END OF ISRAEL:
“Heschel wrote that the prophet’s word is a scream in the night. While the world is at ease and asleep, the prophet feels the blast from Heaven.
“It’s not just that Bradley Burston saw what only few others could see, it’s that he found the courage to share it—urgently, honestly, relentlessly.
“Burston has been a voice of moral clarity for decades. If only more had listened… we might not be where we are today. And even still, he wouldn’t stand for us giving up hope—and so the struggle goes on.”
—Rabbi Sharon Brous
Author of the forthcoming The Amen Effect: Ancient Wisdom to Mend Our Broken Hearts and World
“Bradley Burston has warned for years that Israeli Jews would never be truly safe until Palestinians are free. Now Jewish safety and Palestinian freedom look further away than ever.
“Still, his essays don’t counsel despair. They model wisdom, decency, and hope.”
—Peter Beinart
Author, The Crisis of Zionism
“Bradley Burston is ‘the kind of person who loves Israel and hates occupation,’ in his own words about another Israeli. On every issue Burston touches, his passion for Israel, its beauty and potential and tragedy, bursts out of these pages.
"His writing reflects his fierce and intimate devotion to Israel,
alongside unflinching observations about what's going wrong, and
how it could be better.
"Burston's collected works represent an essential warning cry, a
fine and complex tableau, and a roadmap to a better Israel."
-Dr. Dahlia Scheindlin
Political scientist and author of The Crooked Timber of
Democracy in Israel (2023).
Photo by Varda Spiegel